해방의 아이들: 채만식의 우울한 희망

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine Chae Man-sik’s post-liberation life and literature by focusing on the fact that, in his novels, children are depicted as either someone’s offspring or as beings for whose growth and future adults bear responsibility. Chae Man-sik believed that neither he nor other writers could be exempt from guilt, since the essence of their collaboration with Japan lay in the conscription of lives—forcing not-yet-born children and young people into war—and in encouraging them to kill. By deferring the liquidation of pro-Japanese collaborators and by leaving national division unresolved, he viewed critically how, under U.S. military rule, the establishment of a separate government—founded upon a monopoly and excess of violence—was once again driving children into violent circumstances. This study also seeks to clarify that, far from choosing isolation after liberation, Chae Man-sik consistently engaged in activities that reflected a coherent political awareness. In April 1946, he was appointed a member of the Fiction Department of Korean Writers Alliance <Chosun-Munhakga-Dongmeang>, then in November was elected as its Central Executive Committee Chairman, and in February 1947 was chosen as Chairman of the Jeollabuk-do Branch of the Federation of Korean Cultural Organizations <Jeonbuk Munlyeon>. His participation took on clearer significance on July 26, 1948, when, shortly before the founding of the Republic of Korea’s separate government following the failure of North-South negotiations, he signed the “Proclamation of the Nation’s Crisis” alongside 330 other cultural figures. He also maintained close ties with Kim Jong-ryang, publisher of Segye Ilbo and Hanseong Ilbo. Because Kim Jong-ryang, a supporter of Kim Gu, published articles demanding the withdrawal of U.S. forces, Segye Ilbo was forcibly shut down. This paper reveals that Chae Man-sik collaborated with Kim Jong-ryang to launch a new magazine and serialized the work Sunset(Nakjo, November 2-December 4, 1948) in Hanseong Ilbo. Sunset(Nakjo) depicts young people as the agents of violence in post-liberation Korea, portraying how, amid the establishment of Syngman Rhee’s separate government, the situation in South Korea came to be narrated through the birth of an anti-communist social life. The Pig(Doyaji) likewise illustrates a middle school student in Jeolla Province who, while enduring accusations that his father—running as a candidate in the May 10 general election—was a “red,” comes to define himself as a “red” when confronted with the barrel of a policeman’s gun. Ok Rang-sa(Okrangsa) presents an allegory of the Yŏsun Incident and the Jeju 4.3 Massacre by linking them to the violent colonization process—beginning in the late Joseon and ending with annexation—when foreign military powers intervened. Through the character Sŏnyong, it suggests that colonial violence transformed the growth of the colonized subject itself into a process of violentization. The History series, which deals with Korea from the late Joseon dynasty up through the imposition of martial law in 1948, portrays through a grandmother’s storytelling—how she had heard the sound of gunfire even as a fetus—that life and vitality persist despite political persecution and death. The Boy Grows Up(Sonyeon ŭn Jaranda) follows a boy returning from Manchuria to Iri who, having lost both his parents and his teachers, matures by practicing an ethic of care: that he must not allow his younger sister, also still a child, to be sold into a life of exploitation. With this, Chae Man-sik’s recurring literary theme of “the daughters who were sold” reaches its culmination. In other words, in the midst of political and social turmoil and pervasive violence, the commodification and abuse of women only intensifies, and rejecting and resisting this marks the very beginning of hope.